As rumours circulate that Prestwick Airport is to be renamed “Robert Burns International Airport” the Island Voices project expands its linguistic scope still further, placing local recitations of two of Scotland’s national bard’s most famous poems on the online Clilstore platform. Clicking on any word will take you directly to a choice of Scots, rather than English, dictionaries.
It’s true that the Hebrides are traditionally much more closely associated with Gaelic than with Scots, but here’s another reminder that people are much more mobile these days – even if they do still like to hold on to speech patterns acquired in younger days…
Dumfries-born Denis Johnston addresses the haggis, while simultaneously wielding the knife here, serving up a tasty verbal hors d’ oeuvre: http://multidict.net/cs/1454
And Rob Keltie, in a prodigious feat of memory, takes his audience through the very substantial main course with a dash of Doric seasoning, delivering Tam O Shanter in inimitable style here: http://multidict.net/cs/1451
Clilstore remains “work in progress”, being taken forward by a multinational partnership through the TOOLS project, in which Sabhal Mòr Ostaig plays a key part. Comments and suggestions for improvement are always welcome!